A New Someday
by blue-eyed-beauty2012
Summary: Eight years after BTR disbanded, the boys have completely fallen out of touch with each other, their music, and themselves. But when tragedy throws them back together again, will the guys find the hopes, dreams, and loves they left behind?


_**Ahem… This is purely fanfiction. I own absolutely nothing. Believe me, if I owned Big Time Rush I wouldn't be sitting around writing stories. ;-) Oh, and by the way, in this story we're pretending that BTR became a band in 1999. It serves me better this way. And the 90's was the age of the boy band, after all. Anyway, on with the story…**_

Chapter 1

"_Hello, hello? Anybody out there? Cause I don't hear a sound… Alone, alone; I don't really know where the world is, but I miss it now…" –_Jason Walker, _Echo_

"Mr. Knight?" Brenda's voice was getting irritable, but I couldn't force myself away from the window. Trent Franklin was skating impressively across the rink, driving the puck toward the far goal. Everyone else had already gone home for the day, but the kid remained. I smiled. I loved watching Trent. He reminded me a lot of myself. Or rather myself as I used to be before I'd busted my knee, effectively destroying my hockey career.

I could still remember the day it happened. I was practicing with the guys on the pond behind Carlos' house before my first game as the starting center for the University of Minnesota. My lifelong dream to play for the Minnesota Wilds was finally on its way to coming true. James, Logan, Carlos, and I had determined that we would take a break from our music so that I could play hockey and Logan could start college- he had medical school to get through after undergraduate school after all. Carlos decided to stay in L.A. with James, who had opted to try modeling. Gustavo was none too happy about it, but we'd insisted. It took about eight purposely botched recording sessions, but he reluctantly came around to our side of things. We all fully intended to resume our music careers at some point, however unrealistic it was. We were still young then, and dreams coming true still seemed possible. But reality was roughly shoved into my face on November 28, 2002.

I was driving the puck down the ice, much like Trent was doing now, reveling in the seven months of normalcy that me and the guys had before James and Carlos moved back to L.A. permanently and Logan went off to Harvard for pre-med. I was almost to the goal where Carlos stood guarding with that goofy grin on his face. I remember laughing as I heard Logan yelling for Carlos to sober up and pay attention and James threatening to slit my throat with his lucky comb if I missed the shot. I was preparing to shoot when I saw it: the tall boulder that stuck up about six inches through the ice. I don't remember why I didn't notice that I'd slowly been drifting toward the bank of the pond. The ice had never fully covered the rock in the fourteen years we'd been skating at the Garcias'. All I remember was flying through the air. I tried to land on my skates, but I didn't really have time. The left side of my body slammed down hard on the ice. Blood was running into my eyes, but I couldn't even move to wipe it away. All I could do was slowly fade into blackness, hearing the guys' voices shouting as if from a great distance away and feeling a dull throbbing in my left knee.

I woke up in the hospital two days later with twelve stitches running from my hairline to the top of my left cheekbone, a metal plate in my head, a major concussion, and the news that I would never play a real game of hockey ever again. I had literally shattered my kneecap and the new one the doctors had had to implant would cause me to limp for the rest of my life. I wouldn't be able to walk until I had completed months of grueling physical therapy. Even then I would never really be able to skate again. Or dance. So my hockey career wasn't the only thing to die that day. Any hope of resurrecting Big Time Rush after school died, too.

James and Carlos were devastated, but they hid it well. Gustavo and Kelly had seemed to already know that our boy band days were over. We didn't understand it at the time, but no band takes at least a four year break and survives. Logan, the most realistic of the four of us, began to see that Kelly and Gustavo were right. Me? I was too floored about my now nonexistent hockey career to care about BTR. After all, I'd never dreamed about being a pop star. I grew to love it, of course (Who wouldn't?), but it had always been my plan to leave the band at twenty-one and play hockey. My chance had come early on though, when I'd gotten recruited at nineteen by the Golden Gophers. They'd given me a full scholarship, and although I technically didn't need it anymore, it made Mom happy. The recruiters had all been very nice and helpful, but their attitudes drastically changed when I couldn't play hockey anymore. They took away my scholarship and told me I'd have to pay full tuition the next semester if I wanted to remain at the University of Minnesota.

I was perfectly content to wallow in self-pity and never go back to school, but Mom wasn't having it. So I coughed up a lot of my BTR earnings and enrolled at Minnesota State Community and Technical College for the fall 2003 semester. I took a year off from school for rehabilitation, both physical and mental, following the doctors' recommendations.

That year stunk. From what I understood, Logan was top of his class at Harvard, Carlos and James were living it up in L.A., and Gustavo and Kelly were focusing their energy on Cat's Crew. I was going to rehab four days a week. When I wasn't doing that, I was sitting at home in my wheelchair (which I hated) watching the snow fall outside (which I also hated). In fact, I pretty much hated everyone and everything during that time of my life. I sulked silently on the days I didn't have therapy, and snapped at everyone on the days I did.

Even Jo, who I hadn't talked to in two years, calling to tell me she was finally back in the states after her _Chauncey Jackson_ days didn't cheer me up. In fact, it only made me worse. I told her where she could go, hung up the phone, deleted her number from my cell, burned every picture I had of her, and ripped apart the bear she won at Santa Monica Pier sophomore year. I regretted it the next day, but I never told anyone. I heard that she signed another movie deal shortly after. This time, she was going to Japan for five years. She never called back after that, but sometimes I caught myself wishing that she would.

That year, the guys came home for Christmas, just like always. I tried to avoid them. I didn't want to hear about their successful, fantastic lives. I also really didn't want them to see me hobbling around with a cane. Mom tried to tell me that the boys would be so proud to see that I was no longer confined to a wheelchair that the cane wouldn't matter, but I didn't care. Sure I was doing better, but better still wasn't good enough. I wanted to be myself again.

The guys texted about ninety times each and left about three dozen voicemails apiece. Logan had brought back his new pre-law girlfriend and he wanted me to meet her. James wanted to show me the picture of him that was in People magazine. Carlos just wanted to see me. Eventually, they just showed up at the house on December 23.

I could tell that they were all very upset about me not replying to their attempts to see me when I was clearly very much able to. James said very little after he showed Mom, Katie, and I the shot of him in People, which turned out to be an ad for whitening strips that he'd posed for. Logan was guarded but polite as ever, while his girlfriend, an attractive girl with Buddy Holly glasses and short red hair, sat on the couch saying nothing except for the "Hello, nice to meet you" she'd given me when she entered the house. Carlos talked and grinned like always, but I caught him studying me more than once, most likely trying to find the old Kendall somewhere behind my dull eyes and thin face. The Kendall who loved life, his family, his friends, his music, his hockey… I couldn't have told Carlos where that Kendall was if he'd asked because I couldn't find him either.

After that Christmas, correspondence between me and the guys dropped to a bare minimum, and eventually to zero. And from what I read into, it dropped between the rest of them too.

Logan was entirely and irrevocably zoned in on school and only school. His relationship with the Christmas girlfriend, whose name I could never remember, phased out shortly after Valentine's Day of 2003. From what I gathered, Logan was still top of his class. I knew this because even though I never spoke to Logan anymore, Mom still talked to Mrs. Mitchell. I never told anyone, but I'd sometimes listen in on Mom's chats with Mrs. Mitchell, hoping subconsciously for even a brief mention of Logan's name or how he was doing.

James stayed in L.A. for eight more months, trying desperately to hold onto his dreams of stardom, before finally being financially forced into moving to Minneapolis. Mom heard from Mr. Diamond that James was now working for his mother at her cosmetics company. The good thing was that James was still getting to model, just not for the ads he'd always wanted to. He was always the guy on the billboard or the TV commercial kissing the makeup model's neck or brushing his hand down the side of the skin care model's miraculously smooth face. I'd secretly flip though Mom's copies of Diamond Cosmetics' catalogue, scanning the ads for James, never once finding him as the focal point of any photograph.

Carlos moved to Albuquerque with the rest of his family when his mom got offered a new and better job at a brand new IT company. There, away from any type of ice or snow, Carlos discovered football. Not only did he discover football, he discovered that he was good at football. He spent the entire next year prepping for spring football tryouts at the University of New Mexico. I checked out the official athletic site for the Lobos almost every day until they finally posted the 2003-2004 season roster. Carlos was second-string left defensive tackle, but for a freshman who'd never even played on a football team before, second-string was a miracle.

I kept up with all of them obsessively. Watching their lives play out as though I was a stranger became my new hobby. It got me through the year of waiting for my life to resume itself. Finally, September of 2003 arrived. I packed up my things, kissed Mom and Katie goodbye, and waved farewell to Denville, Minnesota. I didn't even lie to myself. I knew I was never going to move back to Denville. I'd lived there my entire life, except for the nearly four years I'd been a resident of Los Angeles, and I'd never been to a more dead-end, dream-killing place in my life. Denville is where hopes, aspirations, and happy endings go to die.

I arrived at Minnesota State in Fergus Falls to face the inevitable future that awaited me. I had decided to go for Business Management, even though I knew I'd hate it. It was a two year program, and I figured that it was as good as anything else I was ever going to do. After all, why waste my time killing myself for four years on a subject that I was going to loathe anyway? The only two things I'd ever loved to do were now and forever impossible for me to achieve, so I took the easiest road. But along this easiest road I found out something: I was good at Business Management. I couldn't help but feel slightly depressed at this turn of events, but I went with it.

At graduation, Mom, Katie, and Katie's _boyfriend_ (some little twerp she'd picked up while I'd been away) came down to visit. I'd been renting a pretty decent two bedroom apartment for a while so they stayed with me for a few days. I didn't mind sticking Katie's boyfriend on the couch one bit. After the few days were over, Mom, Katie, and the boyfriend headed back to Denville. But before I knew it, Katie and Mom were coming back to Fergus Falls, this time for good.

Soon after they moved in, I got a job managing a fitness gym at a country club. Mom got hired at a fancy restaurant. We both dealt with snobby rich folks all day long, and I couldn't help but think back to my days in Hollywood. I put up the same resilient shield I'd used in L.A. against the well-to-doers, and I managed to get through my days without shoving a pencil into my eye. For three years I stayed in Fergus Falls until I realized that it was becoming a Denville for me. So I packed up, once more said goodbye to Mom and Katie, and moved to St. Paul.

They say that the _Titanic_ was called the "Ship of Dreams". Well, to me, St. Paul, Minnesota was the _city_ of dreams. As long as I could remember, I'd wanted to play for the Minnesota Wild. And now I was living in the city where they were based. The first thing I did when I arrived in St. Paul was to apply for any job they would give me at the Xcel Energy Center. It took an entire week for them to call me back, but they did. And they offered me the post of assistant to the assistant manager of the Xcel Energy Center.

For about nine months, all I did was run errands and get coffee. But eventually, I worked my way up. By the time I was twenty-five, I was the senior manager of the Xcel Energy Center. My office overlooked the ice rink so I could watch the players living the dream that should have been mine. I tried to convince myself that I wasn't depressed or living in the past, but I knew I was. I didn't date, I didn't have any friends, and I rarely left my apartment except for Wild games and work. For two years I'd lived this way, and I figured I'd live this way until I died.

"_Mr. Knight!_"

I slammed my fist against the thick window. I didn't stop to wonder if Trent Franklin had heard me because I knew he hadn't. When I had been happy like he was, nothing could distract me on the ice. I punched the intercom button harder than necessary and I heard the feedback through my closed office door.

"What is it, Brenda?" I barked. It was unusual for Brenda to keep pestering me. She'd been my assistant long enough to know that if I didn't answer after two buzzes, I didn't want to. "What can possibly be _so_ important?"

"You have a phone call-"

"I'm not in the mood to talk."

"But sir-"

"I mean it, Brenda", my voice started to rise. I could feel an explosion coming; I'd always had anger management issues. "Unless it's Craig Leipold himself, then I'm not interested." Craig Leipold was the owner of the Minnesota Wild and all of us at the Xcel Energy Center.

"Mr. Knight, the caller says it's very important."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed loudly. Probably just another agent complaining about some sort of contract infraction. Like I have the power to do _anything_ about it… Oh, well, better just get it over with. I knew from experience that they'd just call back another million times if they were ignored.

"All right, Brenda. Who is this oh-so-important caller?"

Silence. "I'm not exactly sure, sir."

"You're not sure? Then how do you know if it's _actually_ important? You don't even know who this guy is-"

"Oh, he left a name." She hesitated. "I'm just not sure it's his _real_ name."

Sigh. "Well, let's have it."

"He said to tell you that it's, um…" I could hear her rummaging through the papers on her messy desk, no doubt looking for the sticky note she'd written the caller's name on. After about eight seconds, the rustling stopped. "He said to tell you that _Bandana Man_ is calling?"

_**Hope ya'll like the story so far. Review, please! And by the way, if you don't know who Bandana Man is, you are not a true BTR fan and should not be reading this story… Just kidding, please don't get mad at me! I do actually love you guys… Might be hard to tell sometimes, but I do.**_


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